Letter to the Editor: People who use guns illegally are the problem

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A response to "Who does the NRA work for?" by Ed Gurowitz, January 24, 2013.

This is not an attack on Ed. I have known him for many years and highly respect him. However, Ed and other like-minded individuals tend to get lost in emotion and use their own version of fact.

The militia of the Second Amendment was the common man of the 1770s and 80s, not the National Guard of today. Those militia members were called upon to fight for liberty against a tyrannical government. Some say it is preposterous to imagine our government becoming tyrannical. I say the Second Amendment helps guarantee that.

The Bill of Rights restricts the power of government. The Second Amendment guarantees the citizens of these United States will have the right to keep and bear arms. Recently, the US Supreme court ruled the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm and limits the government in its actions.

Ed's statistics are misleading. He states the rate of people killed by people in cars is very close to the people killed by people with guns. Using rounded numbers, in the US in 2010, there were 35,000 motor vehicle deaths and 30,000 deaths by firearms. That's actually 14 percent less.

However, 19,000 of those firearms deaths were suicides. Not having firearms would not have prevented those suicides. That leaves the 11,000 assault-homicides. That's 69 percent less than the motor vehicle deaths. Firearm assault-homicides were less than half of 1 percent of the total in 2010.

I agree with Ed, any death by guns is bad. But, guns are not the problem; the people who use guns illegally are the problem.